I want to share with you.

Think of me as your two wheels on the road in Tuscany, sharing the good and the bad, the beautiful and the just plain weird as I ride through the countryside. I’ll share my favorite coffee stops where rich dark coffee is accompanied by equally rich pastries and often a bit of banter with the baristas. You’ll see some of the most beautiful vistas a road bike can reach. You may even experience (at least in pictures) the wines and wineries we visit.

Let me introduce you to Chianti, Toscana and the people we meet om daily basis.

You’ll come to know the people I see on my rides, whose names I don’t know so they’ll have catchy names like ’old guy on the yellow bike’ or ’those guys on the VitaMin team that always wear black and rarely say hi because they’re trying to look cool’ or ’the men of the Fratelli Militare team who flirt shamelessly but also treat me like a real rider’. You’ll get to know the owner and the mechanic at the local shop which is half bike shop and half vespa/ape repair shop and exactly zero percent a slick merchandising shop. They are indispensable to us, and we like to think we’re indispensable to them. At the very least our conversations amuse them…my Italian is just good enough to start a conversation but not good enough to finish it to everyone’s satisfaction.

Introduction

Hej! I’d like to introduce myself. My name is Michele. I’m originally from Minnesota in the USA. I’m married to a Swede from Linköping. We live in in the heart of Chianti in Italy. Some couples do puzzles together, or garden, or cook. We cycle. All. The. Time. We’re proud to be car-less, which means that every errand involves a bike ride. We’ve even turned cycling into our work as bike tour guides.

Our rides in this beautiful landscape.

I’ll share (probably over-share) my rides, my thoughts, my advice. I hope you enjoy reading. Also, it’s fall here so expect to see pictures of mud. Lots and lots of mud.